Why vulnerability makes you a better parent

One of my biggest challenges that I've learned as a parent is how to be in touch with my one sense of vulnerability; the places in me that are tender and open to really intense feelings that I can't control or often understand.
What I learned as a parent with our first child, our son, is that when he, as an infant, would cry and I'd try to soothe him and help him feel more comfortable and sometimes it wouldn't work so well; I started to feel incompetent. I started to feel impotent to help him, powerless. In that sense of powerlessness, I felt very vulnerable that I couldn't be the strong, protective father I wanted to be. At that moment, instead of continuing to be supportive and sensitive to him, I actually found myself becoming very tight and rigid, very intolerant of him.
In that intolerance, what I came to learn, with some deep reflection, is that I couldn't tolerate a sense of being helpless inside of me. That was my issue to work on, not his as a baby. Instead what would happen is I would kind of flip out. I'd get really angry and agitated and, in doing so, I wasn't able to be the kind of parent that I wanted to be.
What I had to learn was how to be comfortable with my own sense of helplessness, my own sense of vulnerability. In doing that, I could be the kind, compassionate parent that I wanted to be because kindness is really honoring and supporting the vulnerability in others and in ourselves.

Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Neuropsychiatrist, New York Times Bestselling Author, and Mindsight Educator

Daniel J. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. He served as a National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellow at UCLA, studying family interactions with an emphasis on how attachment experiences influence emotions, behavior, autobiographical memory and narrative.

Dr. Siegel is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine where he is on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and the Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person lectures that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. He serves as the Medical Director of the LifeSpan Learning Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Blue School in New York City, which has built its curriculum around Dr. Siegel’s Mindsight approach.

Dr. Siegel has published extensively for the professional audience. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Psychiatry and the author of numerous articles, chapters, and the internationally acclaimed text, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. This book introduces the field of interpersonal neurobiology, and has been utilized by a number of clinical and research organizations worldwide, including the U.S. Department of Justice, The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, Microsoft and Google. The Developing Mind, Second Edition: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are was published in March 2012. Dr. Siegel serves as the Founding Editor for the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology which contains over 12 textbooks. The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being explores the nature of mindful awareness as a process that harnesses the social circuitry of the brain as it promotes mental, physical, and relational health. The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician's Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration explores the application of focusing techniques for the clinician’s own development, as well as their clients' development of mindsight and neural integration. Norton released Dr. Siegel’s the Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind in April 2012.

Dr. Siegel’s book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, offers the general reader an in-depth exploration of the power of the mind to integrate the brain and promote well-being. He has written two parenting books, Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive with Mary Hartzell, M.Ed. and The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind with Tina Payne Bryson, PhD., both of which explore the application of the mindsight approach to parenting. Dr. Siegel's latest release is The New York Times bestseller Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (Tarcher, 2013), which explains how brain development impacts teenagers' behavior and relationships. His next book with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D. is No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind.

Dr. Siegel’s unique ability to make complicated scientific concepts easy to understand and exciting has led him to be invited to address diverse local, national and international groups of mental health professionals, neuroscientists, corporate leaders, educators, parents, public administrators, healthcare providers, policy-makers, and clergy. He has been invited to lecture for the King of Thailand, Pope John Paul II, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Google University, and TEDx. For 2010-2011, Dan is serving as the National Speaker for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Mindfulness and Integrative Medicine Lectures. He lives in Southern California with his family.

One of my biggest challenges that I've learned as a parent is how to be in touch with my one sense of vulnerability; the places in me that are tender and open to really intense feelings that I can't control or often understand.
What I learned as a parent with our first child, our son, is that when he, as an infant, would cry and I'd try to soothe him and help him feel more comfortable and sometimes it wouldn't work so well; I started to feel incompetent. I started to feel impotent to help him, powerless. In that sense of powerlessness, I felt very vulnerable that I couldn't be the strong, protective father I wanted to be. At that moment, instead of continuing to be supportive and sensitive to him, I actually found myself becoming very tight and rigid, very intolerant of him.
In that intolerance, what I came to learn, with some deep reflection, is that I couldn't tolerate a sense of being helpless inside of me. That was my issue to work on, not his as a baby. Instead what would happen is I would kind of flip out. I'd get really angry and agitated and, in doing so, I wasn't able to be the kind of parent that I wanted to be.
What I had to learn was how to be comfortable with my own sense of helplessness, my own sense of vulnerability. In doing that, I could be the kind, compassionate parent that I wanted to be because kindness is really honoring and supporting the vulnerability in others and in ourselves.